although not so readily expressed as the more melancholy and often morbid thoughts of the so-called Romanticists (who really limited the very sense of the word romance), these exhilarating and life-giving emotions, we see not only in the character of the subject portrayed the way in which it was seen-but in the very manner in which it was painted.

The pictures of the French period painted at Giverny show a wide range of interest, and include several large figure subjects as well as many smaller canvases of local landscape. The surrounding country is happily related to the predilections of the modern painter. It has a peculiarly delightful and intimate charm. The river reflects the opposite shore and its banks are grown with picturesque poplars; the fields are cultivated with varicolored products; the hillsides, only so high as to define the valley, are mapped out in interesting patterns, and the little hamlet of Giverny, with red-roofed houses and simple façades, belongs to the intimacy of the landscape. It is a decidedly friendly country, and has nothing of the forbidding, the austere, or the solemn grandeur of uncultivated nature. It is this particular charm with which Robinson has imbued his pictures and brings to his subjects a particularly human and intimate association. Our painter is not so happy in suggesting the illusion of expanse, and finds it more difficult also to design in extended perspective. Robinson is at his best when the theme is limited in area, which allows of carefully considered space relations and a more or less linear design with simple planes. He does not portray the dramatic aspects of nature, the unusual effects of changing weather, or the form and color that express power, volume, and action. His mood is tranquil, serene, and joyous. The later pictures were painted directly from nature, and in consequence depended upon more or less constant and even conditions of weather. We must not expect, therefore, themes of a subjective nature which are evolved from an introspective mood.

If in the forms of nature we see something of the absolute, the eternal, and unchanging, in its manifestation to the human consciousness as revealed by light it is ever changing and varied. As Robinson said in writing of Monet: "One of his favorite sayings is 'La nature ne s'arrête pas.'' It is

the expression of this illusion of form and its ever-changing color as revealed by light that became the principal problem of the Impressionists and that likewise is for Theodore Robinson the very theme of the picture. It is this preference for the transient effects of light and its accompanying color that marks the departure from the prevalent interpretation of form, and that caused the pictures of our painter to seem strange to the eyes of his American contemporaries. He confesses that when as a student in Paris seeing for the first time the "Danse des Nymphes" of Corot then hanging in the Luxembourg, "I well remember how oddly at first its blue tone struck me." And again: "That there is more color in nature than the average observer is aware of, I believe any one not color-blind can prove for himself by taking the time and trouble to look for it." "That refined color must necessarily be dull color, that one should not paint up too near white; that one should husband his resources; and that if any qualities must be sacrificed let them be those of color and air-all these theories have been stoutly and efficiently combated by the Impressionists." These assertions of our painter show his preoccupation with the considerations of air, light, and color, and his pictures reveal his attentive and constant observation of their effects in nature. But Robinson's color is never affected, blatant, or spectacular. He delighted in the beauty of closely related harmonies and was particularly fond of light neutral hues, opposing violet with variations of cool greens and vivacious touches of delicate gold. He did not use color for its own sake as something entirely apart from the representation of nature, but, on the contrary, he was a most sensitive observer of the values which give the illusionistic effect of form and differentiate distances and planes. Sensitive to the effects of the complementary contrast of hues and conversant with the principle of their effect when juxtaposed, Robinson did not allow the theory of broken color to become merely a mannerism. His sensitive perception of the change of color with the change of value and his keen observation of the chromatic effects of light mark particularly his departure from the academical representation of form.

As a painter his brush was sensitive and artistic, his touch delicate and deliberate.

On returning to America it was perhaps difficult for our painter to become at once sympathetic to a country which is more rugged and wild and where the composition is not so easily arranged as in a land where the hand of man has planted trees and the subject is more decorative and defined. But Robinson knew that the picture is in truth composed in the mind of the artist, and that where there is air and sunshine there is also infinite material for the painter. And the short period of his work here after his final return shows clearly that the influence of France had not limited his vision or formulized his expression.

This is well exemplified in "On the Canal," in the collection of Mr. Samuel T. Shaw, a larger replica of which is in the Philadelphia Academy. Here we see the brilliant coloring of a clear summer day,

Eastern States but seldom seen in northern France. Robinson has rendered it with unerring accuracy and an almost primitive frankness. It has the unaffected and uncultivated simplicity of American landscape, but the artistic eye has observed the beauty of the commonplace and characterized it in a masterful manner. The wooden fence, the telegraph-poles, the red bridge, the simple farmhouses have been made elements of a picturesque pattern which at the time was thought very unbecoming and unconventional. To see thus in a comprehensive and understanding way and to express this perception is in truth a kind of revelation, a kind of seeing which is far removed from what is lightly spoken of as merely imitating nature. It was in this sense that Robinson was a creator and has helped us to revalue and revisualize the objective world.

ΟΝ

Circumstances of an Anniversary

N the 11th of November there was celebrated in no very ostentatious way the third anniversary of the ending of the war. It occurred in many respects under interesting circumstances. An international conference, ostensibly for limitation of armaments but actually for discussion of the world's pressing problems, political and economic, was just convening at Washington. The United States-of which the outside world's bitter complaint since the middle of 1919 had been that, after having shared in drawing the Treaty of Versailles, it had refused to accept it and had insisted on holding aloof from Europe's problems was the caller of the conference and the leading figure in it. All the great nations of the League of 1919 were represented. The Prime Minister of France was a delegate at Washington; the celebrated French Marshal who had conducted the Allied armies to final victory

was at the same time a guest of the

United States. From all these viewpoints the situation was remarkable-a good deal more remarkable than the American people seemed to realize. Naturally, it turned the mind to retrospect of the three-year period since November, 1918.

Political events moved with extreme rapidity in the immediate sequel to the German surrender. The sudden downfall of monarchy in Central Europe, the rise of experimental governments, the attempts of Communists to seize control, the overthrow of Bolshevist insurrections by the forces of law and order and by popular vote of the German and French electorates-in short, the whole familiar sequence to a period of toppling governmental systems-these events followed on

one another's heels so swiftly that the world began to conceive of its existing problems as altogether political.

More slowly, and only after a full year's interval, economic problems took the three years, indeed, the world's markets front of the stage. During the first of the had indulged in the illusion that ending of the war had brought a new era of immediate international prosperity; it was not until the next two years that the economic situation passed into a chapter of readjustment as sweeping and violent as the political upheaval of 1919. To-day, with the ending of the three-year period since Germany's surrender, and with economic conditions, except in Russia and Central Europe, approaching something like temporary equilibrium, the larger and unsettled political questions are again beginning to obscure the economic. From the financial view-point, it is a time to look back at the history of the period and see what has actually happened.

SUCH retrospect is more necessary be

The Illusion of Time

cause of the complete bewilderment into which the mind of the economic as well as the political world has been plunged. As is always the case in a period crowded with rapid changes and quick succession of spectacular events, the unconscious impression is that a very long time has elapsed since the signing of the armistice. People do not in November of 1921 look back at November of 1918 with the sense of chronological nearness, of closely associated ideas and problems, with which the people of November, 1913, looked back at November, 1910. Instead of the slow unfolding of events and tendencies belonging to an ordinary era of history, the world has been hurried, one may say, with the utmost